Ashes in My Wake
by natnau
Summary: Nathalie Sancoeur has blindly followed Gabriel Agreste for years. One revelation turns everything on its head. SPOILER WARNING! This is a oneshot based on the reveal during Chat Blanc, from Nathalie’s perspective. I immediately got the angst gears turning after watching that episode.


It hits her like a freight train when she first sees it.

He shouts something he can't quite decipher, then she sees a flash of green. Suddenly he's wearing all black, running towards that girl crying on the staircase, the one she made cry, and reaching for the butterfly fluttering innocuously towards her.

Her heart nearly stops.

The girl's crawling into his arms now, he cradles her, drying her tears. All she can do is stand there looking through the window, trembling and feeling unbearable guilt and shame eat away at her from the inside out. A muffled, electronic voice calls her name from her cell phone. She doesn't know what to say, she's still shaking, she can barely tear her eyes away from the little boy she saw grow up hold his sweetheart on the concrete. The voice calls again, This time she can barely, just barely, find it within herself to respond.

"Your son, Adrien.. He's-"

She chokes out the last three words, guilt heavy on her tongue.

"...He's Chat Noir."

She hangs up drops the phone. It clatters to the ground, screen shattering on impact. She quickly follows suit, her knees giving out on her before she even has time to think. Her hands are cold and clammy, fingernails scraping against marble. She does everything she can to compose herself, steady her breathing, put herself back together.

She screams.

Guttural and raw, her shout echoes into the empty room. Every fiber of her soul erupts into pure agony. She doesn't know who she's calling to. A God, or the sky, or to Gabriel, or to just someone, anyone who can stop the pain she's feeling. She's hurt the one she most loved, hurt the ones he's loved, broken the law and terrorized the city. All for someone who she knows can't - won't- love her. She's a bad person.

And it's tearing her apart.

She screams until her vocal chords are shot. The sobs follow immediately. Her eyes spill over with hot tears, mascara marking her face with black trails. The sobs wrack her her body, robbing her breath from her and replacing it with self-hatred, heavy like iron in her lungs, She feels like she's drowning, she can't breathe, she's going to be sick. She collapses completely onto her side, still crying uncontrollably. For the first time in a very long time, she honestly, truly doesn't know what to do.

In her mind, she prays that Gabriel won't hurt him. She pleads with him in her head, he knows better, he loves him too much. It's impossible for her to tell who she's trying to convince.

Alone on the marble floor, she rocks back and forth, tearfully whispering a phrase to herself. Over and over she says it, like a prayer, that only tightens the knot of guilt in the pit of her stomach.

"What have I become?"

She lays and weeps there for what feels to her like hours. Her body grows tired, and after exhausting herself with her own self hatred, she falls asleep on the floor next to her desk, where she believes she belongs.

She awakens to the house shaking.

The roof has crumbled in a few places. She hears shouting from the basement. _No, he knows better. He wouldn't consider it. He wouldn't put his own son in danger anymore._ One voice rises above the others, young and angry and filled with vitriol, as if he'd been betrayed. _No, no, no. This can't be happening. No. No!_ Another voice, much deeper this time, responds. She bites her lip so hard she draws blood. Within a few seconds, she sees a black-colored silhouette fly out from the house, towards the Eiffel Tower.

_THIS IS ISN'T THE MAN I'M GIVING MY LIFE FOR!_

_...Is it?_

The sobs start again, stronger this time. Her breath is like tar in her lungs, thick and heavy and tasting of death. The one she loves is a sociopath. She knew this, and loved him anyway.

_He's a monster_, she thinks to herself.

"I'm a monster," she says aloud.

She sees a flash of blinding white light from the window. A few tears run down her cheeks, as her worst fears are realized before her very eyes. She's paralyzed by fear and guilt and shame and sadness, unable to move from the tiles behind her desk.

The light grows brighter. She knows what this means- this is her reckoning, her judgement. She whispers one last thing to herself. An apology.

"I'm so sorry, Adrien. For everything."

The light engulfs her. Her eyes close.


End file.
